Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/750

Rh ituality of her mind was made manifest later in her influence over all those whom she taught. As time went on and Mary Lyon became more and more intrenched in her life work of teaching, her spiritual life deepened and her activities were intensified in two or three very important ways. She was deeply imbued with the importance of instruction in Bible truths, and in the conversion of her pupils, and more and more impressed with the importance of loyalty and self-sacrifice for the promotion of foreign missions. I think she was the pioneer in what is now quite common in Christian colleges—a definite laboring for the conversion of students as an important part of the college work. It was her custom to write to Christian friends in all parts of the country and enlist their prayers for the spiritual condition of her school. She had wonderful faith in prayer, and the results justified her faith. Mary Lyon's power in developing Christian character in her pupils lay in the fact that she not only lived a Christian life herself, but regularly taught it to her pupils. Her manner was simple ; there was not the slightest pretense of speaking for effect or trying to speak eloquently, but her intense faith and earnestness made her a powerful speaker. Doctor Hitchcock, at one time president of Amherst College, says that the vividness with which she evidently saw and thought the truths she was telling was only second to her power. If she ever had a fleeting doubt of the certainty of future retribution that doubt was never known or suspected by her most intimate friends. The foundations of faith never wavered. The principles of the Christian religion seemed interwoven in the fibres of her soul. The world to come was as present to her thoughts as this world to her eyes. Her confidence in God was as simple and true as a child's in its mother.

Mary Lyon had broad and noble ideas concerning the necessity for the education of woman and the possible bless-